Universality of coproducts in categories of lax algebras (Q2432584)

The authors study categories \({\mathcal A}lg(T,V)\) of lax algebras for a lax 2-monad \(T\) on the 2-category \({\mathcal M}at(V)\) of \(V\)-valued matrices. Here \(T\) extends a monad \(T_0\) on the category of sets and \(V\) is a complete monoidal ordered set. The basic example, with \(T_0\) the ultrafilter monad and \(V\) the second ordinal, has \({\mathcal A}lg(T,V)\) isomorphic to the category of topological spaces [see \textit{M. Barr}, ``Relational algebras'', Lect. Notes Math. 137, 39--55 (1970; Zbl 0204.33202)]. The present paper shows that coproducts exist in \({\mathcal A}lg(T,V)\), and are pullback stable, if \(T\) preserves inverse images. This is the case in the basic example; the general situation can be seen as a lifting of the example through a concrete functor.